Rick Salutin, well-respected columnist for The Globe and Mail, and rabble.ca has published a criticism of the campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions against the state of Israel.[1] Below is one of the responses posted to his column when it appeared on rabble.[2] • It is not credible for Rick Salutin to paint all boycott campaigns with the same brush. U.S. sanctions against Cuba are an attack by an imperialist country on a small oppressed nation. U.N. sanctions against Iraq in the 1990s cost hundreds of thousands of lives and were the preliminary act in the horror that became the…
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The war in Gaza is a completely unequal contest. Israel – receiving billions of dollars in military aid every year from the United States – has one of the most sophisticated killing machines in the world. Gaza is an open-air prison, whose only outlet to the outside world for months has been through tunnels dug deep beneath the border with Egypt. Rockets fired from Gaza have killed a handful of Israelis. Israel’s offensive has killed more than 600 – including the slaughter of 40 at a U.N. school.[1] Yet in spite of these facts, the NDP official statement on the…
Comments closed“The spirit of Palestine will be in every theatre in Toronto.” With these words, Rafeef Ziadah introduced “Salt of This Sea,” first offering in the first ever Toronto Palestine Film Festival. With more than 800 in attendance, the opening was a smash success. Through eight days of screenings, more than 4,000 people attended 36 films. As well as a cultural success, politically the film festival was testament to the growing support for Palestine solidarity in the city of Toronto. The timing of the event was not accidental. 2008 is the 60th anniversary of the Nakba – the catastrophe of ethnic…
Comments closed“I want to express my gratitude to both CUPE (Canadian Union of Public Employees) and CUPW (Canadian Union of Postal Workers) for the solidarity they have shown to the Palestinian people.” With these words, Manawell Abdul Al, member of the executive committee of the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions summed up the sentiment at the 150-strong opening plenary of the “Brick by Brick” conference at the Steelworkers Hall in Toronto. He was referring to the motions passed first at CUPE-Ontario, and this year at CUPW national, supporting the campaign for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against the state of Israel.…
Comments closedThe war in Iraq “indicates that leaders of the invading states did not listen to the church, and hence, we deem them excommunicates and perverted.”[1] These were the words of Father Attallah Hanna in April 2003. He was expressing the outrage of Palestinian Christians over the invasion of Iraq. As a result of this excommunication, George Bush, then Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Tony Blair, and Blair’s then foreign minister Jack Straw, were banned from visiting the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, one of the Christianity’s holiest sites. March 29, Attallah Hanna took his anti-war message to more than 600…
Comments closedThe sad passing of George Habash January 26, is an opportunity to learn the lessons from his long life of struggle. In the 1970s at the peak of his influence, he embodied the hopes of thousands struggling to win Palestine freedom against the forces of imperialism, Israeli militarism and capitalism. Often known as “Al Hakim” (the doctor or wise man),[1] Habash was born in 1925 or 1926 in Lydda Palestine. Like many Palestinians, his hometown has “vanished” – what was Lydda, Palestine now being called Lod, Israel.[2] When only 22, he was “witness to the ethnic cleansing of his home…
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